Italian Contemporary Art and Artists on the Silk Road

February 24-April 15, 2023

1F-2F Beijing Inside-Out Art Museum

Ticket Price：20 yuan

Group visitors (Above 10 visitors) with reservation to visit at the appointed time.

Beijing Inside-Out Art Museum is honored to open the first significant international exhibition in 2023, “Italian Contemporary Art and Artists on Silk Road”, which will last from February 24 to April 15, 2023, on the first and second floors of the museum. Curated by art historian, critic, and curator Angela Tecce, the exhibition will present the practice of over 30 artists spanning multiple generations through more than 30 works. The list of artists included in the exhibition constitutes an index to the history of contemporary art in Italy after World War II. A selection of outstanding artistic figures from each generation from those born in the 1920s to the 1980s is featured in this exhibition. the earliest piece featured is in 1967, and the latest is in 2020, across the span of more than half a century. Among them, the works since 2010 are the main ones. The exhibition presents works of established artists and young talents, providing a comprehensive view of Italian contemporary art, especially the different trends that have emerged in recent years. As a contemporary art institution recognized for its independent and experimental spirit, Inside-Out Art Museum has been carrying out long-term art historical research, supporting non-commercial art practice, and leading research and thinking in disciplines of humanity. Through the “Silk Road” exhibition consisting of these conceptual creations, we prove that the museum retains serious quality.

As a dominant project of the China-Italy Year of Culture and Tourism, this international touring exhibition was promoted by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, implemented by the Galluzzo Foundation, and co-organized by Beijing Inside-Out Art Museum and the Italian Cultural Institute in Beijing. The exhibition is conceived and organized in the historical context of the “Silk Road”, which has been popular in Eurasia since the Middle Ages and has evolved throughout history. Silk Road covered traffic of land and sea. People from all regions traded silk and other commodities along it, forming a crisscrossing network of transactions. This vast network led to frequent activity and mixing of populations, giving rise to interactions of knowledge, ideas, cultures, and beliefs that profoundly affect the history and culture of the people of Asia and Europe.

Starting from Italy, the country where the Silk Road ends, this touring exhibition travels back in time, taking contemporary Italian art to different stations: Kyiv, Ankara, Tbilisi, Tashkent, Beijing, and Chongqing, leaving an imprint on the aesthetic culture and tradition – it is this mark that makes this journey constitute an eternal link between East and West. This thread of stories, anecdotes, experiences, and exchanges is similar to the internet nowadays. The Silk Road was a legendary experience in human history, opening a mind-blowing new chapter, and since then only the online world has replicated the same dense connections. Along the millions of roads that made up the Silk Road, the winds of change and progress evolved into a network that has always represented the central nervous system of Eurasia. The fantastic weave of knowledge and collaboration encourages us to retrace these paths. Our enlightened ancestors had transformed these paths into intellect, wealth, and friendship.

Today, a renewed reference to this ancient record through the presentation of contemporary art creations may help us to understand history in the encirclement and entanglement of nations. Art offers a precious vision, letting us realize that the conceptual and political spheres are separated, that the imagination and reality can be dealt with independently, and that the remarkable strength of art and the strategies of politics are different. In this sense, contemporary art, full of philosophical and interrogative consciousness, maintaining its tensions with the power, the commercial orders, and the countries, can also supply a connection that links all the free thoughts. Inside-Out Art Museum is glad to participate in this effort to re-conceive a global network. As the artists and works in this exhibition are merely an index, the realization of this exhibition is only the beginning of this re-creation of a global alliance. The best is yet to come.